A blog about societal, cultural, and civilizational collapse, and how to stave it off or survive it. Named after the legendary character "Crazy Eddie" in Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle's "The Mote in God's Eye." Expect news and views about culture, politics, economics, technology, and science fiction.

At 2:20 a.m. on April 15, 1912, the "unsinkable" R.M.S. Titanic disappeared beneath the waves, taking with her 1,500 souls. One hundred years later, new technologies have revealed the most complete-and most intimate-images of the famous wreck.

National Geographic is also promoting it like mad on their YouTube Channelwithatleastsixvideoclips. Here are the two most recent of the series, in which James Cameron and his team formulate a hypothesis (Cameron calls it a theory; it isn't) about how the Titanic sank and test it by modeling the sinking and comparing the results of the model to the evidence.

James Cameron discusses how breaking a banana in half is the perfect analogy to describe how the Titanic broke apart.

James Cameron and his team pull together a new CGI of how they believe the TItanic sank and reached the ocean floor.

Other than is (unfortunately common) misuse of theory for hypothesis, these two clips work very well as an example of how testing a hypothesis using a computer model works. I might just show it to my classes starting next month.

The sinking of the Titanic also serves as both an example of and a metaphor for the catastrophic failure of technology. The "unsinkable ship of dreams" encounters a known hazard, an iceberg, and sinks to the immediate horror of all involved and the lingering fascination of people for at least five generations afterward. Would a failure of our own society and its technological support look like this? That's worth contemplating.